Datanyze raised a round of two of VC 6-7 years ago but I'm not sure what they're up to recently.
191 karma · joined June 17, 2011
Co-founder of Predictable Revenue, previously Carb.io & voltageCRM.
Before writing any code, you'll likely need to do 50-200 customer development interviews to find and hone in on a new unique opportunity. So, why not start here?
Goals != Strategy and that took a while to realize.
I wish I read Good Strategy Bad Strategy and The 7 Powers first.
If you're willing to spend a little for some automation the Glock Apps is pretty good too.
I've read the book and yes, it will answer your question. It shares the theory and does a great job of walking through cases to reinforce the point. Been a founder/CEO for 10 years and this book changed the way I think about strategy.
My favorite part:
Diagnosis - why are we in this mess (define the problem or challenge)?
Guiding policy - what method are we going to use address the challenge?
Coherent action - typical OKR stuff, what do people need to do in what time period?
In previous strat plans I did have some of these elements but this framework helped ensure I was consistently considering the right pieces and was thorough in my analysis.
I was surprised by how much post production happens after the initial draft is written.
As I recall, our biggest cash outlays were marketing and editing.
"We have identified the threat actor behind the attack, who is part of a group called the Monday group, which the members refer to as “theMx0nday”. The group has stated publicly that they support Russia in this conflict.
The threat actor is based in Brazil. The majority of attacks transited an internet service provider in Finland called Njalla who claim they are “Considered the worlds most notorious ‘Privacy as a Service’ provider for domains, VPSs and VPNs”. Njalla is run by Peter Sunde, who is the co-founder of Pirate Bay, has a criminal record, and has served prison time."
I've been using them for a while for a side project email that sends/receives through a free Gmail account and it works well.
I've worked with email for a while and was surprised by how easy it was to set up.
Works across all grandparents and I used one of their auto upload a face (I'm sure that's the technical term for it) to automatically send a photos of the grandkids to the grandparents. This makes the whole system worthwhile, I get comments from them constantly about how much they love the auto photo albums.
Another along a similar theme is Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E Frankl.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4069.Man_s_Search_for_Me...
Not trying to poke fun, just an odd thought that's been bobbing around my brain this week.
1. Kindle next to bed for reading (leave phone out of reach/in another room to charge helps)
2. Good book on back of toilet and no phone allowed in there. Helps start the day with a small piece of learning.
I started #2 (sorry) when I was struggling to finish Seeking Wisdom and figured reading 5 mins a day would get me through. Took 3 months but it worked and turned out to be the perfect place to digest dense content like it.
Zwift has pace partners that you can chase (3 different ones depending on pace) that have sucked me into riding harder and longer than I ever have on zwift or a stationary bike. I find it's worth it for that experience.
Clips take some getting used to (3-4 rides where it feels a bit odd) but I've learned to love them and it feels odd whenever I ride without. I'd strongly encourage you to try them out if you're riding this much. For context, I used to ride everywhere in sandals and everything changed once I got my clips.
Where would I go to find info on setting this up natively? I've looked before but clearly missed something.
Maybe you need some more time, maybe you need to surrender to the ~ or maybe it's not your jam and that's ok too.
Now I'm a big fan and find it disorienting to go back to Windows but I've been here for 10 years. CMD + ~ all the way.
I'll see if I can track down the link but I remember somebody sharing a dump with me from Amazon that apparently was a recent scrape.
- process first - then train people - then find software to enable the process
I imagine dev may be similar so apologies for the covering the bases. I find many people jump into tools without building good process first.
For process - start with your pipe and qualification stages (if you want a helpful breakdown search Jaimie Buss MEDDPICC - she's VP Sales at Zendesk and forecasts quarterly rev within 1%).
Then figure out your call plans (scripts/outlines) based on above qual methodology.
If you do those two manually in Google sheets you'll be better off than wasting time implementing tech.
FWIW:
CRM = salesforce Engagement = outreach Data = zoominfo Notes = Dooly
That last one is more important than it seems because it ties together your methodology and your CRM when done well.
If you're not getting referrals then you may not be solving the problem or the problem isn't that valuable.
Once you have 10-20 customers from outside your network it's an early indication of product market fit.
Next, hire a full time marketing leader.
Over simplifying a little, here's a more product focused answer from a few weeks ago (the other answers in the thread were excellent): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27059370
The conversation centered around how to create a category but I think the process applies to side projects as well.
Copy/paste from Google doc didn't work well on mobile so here's a link to the doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1F0ex-c-vmitYQiDnSSODUZCW...
Michel’s playbook
Look for 3 big shifts in the buyer’s world
Conduct day in the life interviews
Asking When you walk in in the morning, what is the first thing you do every day? How many applications do you log into? What applications do you love and why? If there was a problem I could solve for you, what would it be and why? Who do you report to What are you MBOs
Looking for
What did they do all day What did they love What did they perceive as pain What were they promoted for if they did well What are their challenges in their interactions with their boss
Make sure you understand
Technology landscape Daily work life Responsibilities / mission
Look for patterns in the data
Common pains / problems Value attached to solving it
Find a gap you can solve
What’s the value to the user? What’s the impact on the organization? What’s the ROI of the impact? Value of solving?
Market
Start with a bottoms up TAM
How much do I think they’ll pay me for this? Shoot for 10% of the value, eventually. If I achieve 20% share of the market, is it a $1 billion company?
Then do a top down TAM
If I could redirect 1% of category spending, what would that be? $100b TAM = great for B2B, $1t for B2C?
Product
Break down what you’re going to build
Is it defensible enough from the way our competitors are currently doing things? Is there mental space for a new Kleenex? Whiteboard the solution
Identify 3 core capabilities you must build
See what’s out there for each of these How difficult is it to build each? How defensible is it?
Time horizon
Is anyone out there doing anything close to this?
Positioning / differentiated narrative
Can you define the narrative? How difficult is it to copy? How different is the platform? Can you get your competitors to sell on your narrative? Ex. No Software, Inbound Marketing, Conversational Marketing
Value
Early days you’ll only get 1% of the value you create As you grow, you’ll have more leverage and will be able to slowly bring that up to 10%
1. Conduct customer development interviews where you interview potential users and don't show them your product. Simply ask questions that will demonstrate to you if they have pain.
2. For each pain statement, ask them to rank it's importance on a scale of 1 to 10 and their satisfaction with their current solution on a scale of 1 to 10. This helps you quantify the size of the opportunity.
2.a. repeat this process 50 to 200 times.
3. Stock rank your pain statements based on the largest surface area.
4. Build an MVP.
5. Show it to the people that rated the pains the highest and ask for feedback.
6. If you really nailed it they will be asking you how they can become customers.
7. If they're not asking how they can buy then ask for more feedback.
I think the quantify step was pulled from "lean product management".
I've followed this twice and you usually have to loop through the feedback step a few times before you get it.
Both times, my first 10 customers have come from these interviews and my next 100 have come from referrals from those initial 10. I think that's the gist of Ash's 10x product launch.
I'm being fairly brief because it's a complex subject and I'm on mobile.